Firefox 78.0.1esr – Page Up/Down no longer working

English Applications
1

Since yesterdays Leap 15.1 patch to Firefox 78.0.1esr, the Page Up/Down stopped working.

  • I clicked into the displayed page and, Page Up/Down began working.
  • Pressing the <Tab> key also worked.
  • Internet search …

The issue is <F7> – “accessibility.browsewithcaret” …

Caret Browsing is provided as a way to navigate through a web page—using only the keyboard—by moving a text caret. This mode is more easily toggled by pressing [F7].

<http://kb.mozillazine.org/Accessibility.browsewithcaret&gt;
[HR][/HR]Within Firefox, open the URL <about:config> – agree to all the warnings and select “Show all settings”.

  • Set “accessibility.browsewithcaret” to the value “false”.

I haven’t yet noticed if, in the URL <about:support>, the change is listed in the list of important settings changed, or not – I may have to restart Firefox …

2

Everything normal here, “accessibility.browsewithcaret” is set to false and no mention in the “settings changed” list. Doesn’t appear to be a general problem.
Pressing F7 pops up a warning, so you cannot inadvertently trigger that either.

3

Digging deeper and, going through the Firefox settings, it seems that, the default value for the setting “accessibility.browsewithcaret” is “false”.

  • It may well be that, after yesterday’s patch was applied, at the next invocation of Firefox the Mozilla upgrade routines for my settings, inadvertently flipped the “accessibility.browsewithcaret
    ” setting.
4

With Firefox 78.0.1esr and 78.0.2esr, the settings for “Browsing” include two checkboxes which will affect Accessibility settings:

  • Using the keyboard to select text (Caret Browsing) – will enable “accessibility.browsewithcaret
    ” … - Search for text when you begin typing – will enable “accessibility.typeaheadfind
    ” …